On 30 January 1933 Adolf Hitler dismantled the Weimar Republic and established the Third Reich, with himself as Führer (leader) and head of state. On 15 March 1935 he abolished Weimar's armed forces, the Reichswehr, and replaced them with the Wehrmacht. Hitler announced that the Wehrmacht would not be bound by the restrictions imposed on the Reichswehr by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which limited it to 100,000 volunteers with no tanks, heavy artillery, submarines or aircraft. The Wehrmacht expanded rapidly. On 1 September 1939, when Germany attacked Poland, it numbered 3,180,000 men. It eventually expanded to 9,500,000, and on 8/9 May 1945, the date of its unconditional surrender on the Western and Eastern Fronts, it still numbered 7,800,000. The Blitzkrieg period, from 1 September 1939 to 25 June 1940, was 10 months of almost total triumph for the Wehrmacht, as it defeated every country, except Great Britain, that took the field against it. In this first of five books examining the German Army of World War Two, Nigel Thomas examines the uniforms and insignia of Hitler's Blitzkrieg forces, including an overview of the Blitzkrieg campaign itself. Illustrations by Stephen Andrew.